The Sammlung Moderne Kunst dedicates an extensive overview exhibition to its significant photographic collections during the summer months of 2025. Featuring around 250 works from more than 60 artists spanning the last 100 years to the present, this exhibition traces the developments in the photography collection since its inception at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.

Since the establishment of the Pinakothek der Moderne in 2002, a department for photography and time-based media has been created, actively incorporating photography into the collection. The permanent loans from the corporate collections of Siemens (2003) and Allianz (2004), focusing on photography from the 1970s onwards, marked a spectacular beginning that has been continuously expanded. In 2010, the collection received a significant enhancement with the addition of the photographic collection from the gallerist and collector couple Ann and Jürgen Wilde, primarily focused on the modern era, along with the artist archives of Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-Patzsch, which were integrated into the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.

These collections together comprise a comprehensive corpus of approximately 10,000 works, showcasing artistic photography of the highest quality and international reach. The photography of the New Objectivity in the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation as well as the documentary-conceptual photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher and their students in the collection of photography and time-based media mark the focal points of their respective areas and serve as entry points into the exhibition. Subsequent themes such as detail, landscape and expanse, fragment and space, body and identity, and street and society are explored, followed by visual concepts that address life experiences that are not easily visible or representable.

For the first time, the collection of photography and time-based media and the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation will jointly present milestones of artistic photography from the 20th and 21st centuries from their collections. From established core pieces to previously unseen new acquisitions, the exhibition invites visitors to revisit and discover anew.

Opening on July 3, 2025 at 19:00 (running until October 12, 2025) in the Sammlung Moderne Kunst, Halls 21-26. Speakers include Anton Biebl, Interim Director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Simone Förster, Collection Manager of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, and Franziska Kunze, Collection Manager of Photography and Time-Based Media. The speeches will be simultaneously translated into German sign language.

A publication accompanying the exhibition titled "On View. Begegnungen mit dem Fotografischen | Encounters with the Photographic" edited by Simone Förster and Franziska Kunze will be available, featuring a creative contribution from Katharina Gaenssler, with funding from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung.

Public guided tours will take place at no charge on the following dates: Overview tours on July 19, 2025 at 15:00, August 1, 2025 at 16:00, and September 13, 2025 at 15:00. Curator-led tours will also be available on August 7, 2025 at 18:30. Additionally, 'talk talk' museum conversations will occur on July 6, September 7, and October 5, 2025 from 15:00-17:00. An English-language tour is scheduled for August 17, 2025 at 12:00, alongside an online live chat on December 8, 2025 at 18:30, and online workshops on July 28, 2025, and October 27, 2025 at 20:00.